May 8, 2002

May 8, 2002, Greencastle, Ind. - Arthur Evans, professor of modern languages and managing editor of the journal Science Fiction Studies at DePauw University, and editor of a new translation of Jules Verne's The Mysterious Island, is cited in a Forbes magazine article on Verne. Entitled , "Eerily Prescient; Jules Verne, the Nostradamus of technology," the story notes, "Before he died in 1905, Verne had depicted -- in some 60 novels -- a world eerily like ours: airplanes, movies, guided missiles, submarines, the electric chair, air conditioning and the fax machine. Even Islamic terrorists make their precocious debut in Invasion Of the Sea (1905), in which they face off against Western technocrats. The book, now translated into English for the first time (Wesleyan University Press, $25), is but one of five newly released Verne novels coming out over the next two years."

Among those reissues is The Mysterious Island (Early Classics of Science Fiction), which was edited by Dr. Evans and recently published by Wesleyan University Press. The work is cited in the story, and later, it notes that "Verne did well by authors' standards of his day. He got a cut of theater adaptations -- the 19th-century equivalent of optioning screenplays. According to Arthur B. Evans, the most prominent Verne scholar in the U.S. and professor of modern languages at DePauw University, Verne earned more than 50,000 francs -- roughly $139,000 in today's dollars -- from his share of the box office take the first year Around the World in 80 Days was performed on stage."

You can read the article in the April 15, 2002 edition of Forbes or, with a free online registration, at the magazine's web site by clicking here. You can read more about Arthur Evans' new edition of Mysterious Island, and order the book, at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com.